Misesian Ownership and Coasian Authority in Hayekian Settings: The Case of the Knowledge Economy

Volume 4, No. 4 (Winter 2001)

Austrian insights are useful for not only interpreting recent claims, but also for understanding their reach. In particular, Misesian insights are helpful here, and it may be argued that there is a certain in ance in the above writings because of their neglect of these insights. Thus, I have argued that Mises’s insights in entrepreneurship, property rights, and the complementarity of elements in economic systems are useful ones for claiming a role for authority and the boundaries of firms, as well as for helping to uphold the notion that there are discrete organizational forms (for example, firms, markets, and hybrids), and that coordination mechanisms cannot be combined arbitrarily. This strongly suggests that Austrian economics (still) has an important contribution to make to the study of economic organization; in particular, that important principles of efficient organization design can be derived from Misesian foundations.